Court Blocks Movie Studios' Bulldozer Legal Strategy

Northern California - A federal judge in California has put a roadblock in front of the movie studios' lawsuits targeting filesharers.

Last week, members of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) filed 11 lawsuits against hundreds of people they accused of using file-sharing networks to share infringing copies of movies. They sued groups of "Does" identified by numerical IP address and requested discovery of names from the users' Internet Service Providers (ISPs). A Northern District of California judge found this bulldozer approach improper, ordering that the case for Does 1-12 should be put on hold for all but one of the defendants.

Judge William Alsup ruled that because claims against the 12 defendants were unrelated, yoking the defendants together into one big case was improper. "Such joinder may be an attempt to circumvent the filing fees by grouping defendants into arbitrarily-joined actions but it could nonetheless appear improper under Rule 20," the order states. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has filed friend-of-the-court briefs objecting to similar misjoinder in many of the cases filed by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) against alleged infringers.

"This decision helps to give due process rights to the Internet users accused of infringement," said EFF Staff Attorney Wendy Seltzer. "Lumping them together makes it more difficult for everyone to defend against these claims." EFF is also concerned about the movie studios' failure to produce evidence of infringement against even Doe #1 in this case.

EFF Announces New Advisory Board

San Francisco - EFF is proud to announce the formation of
its first Advisory Board, a group of legal and technical
experts who will assist in shaping long-term strategies
and goals for the civil liberties organization. The
Advisory Board will meet regularly with EFF staff and
Executive Board members to offer guidance and outside
perspectives.

"EFF is thrilled to have such wonderful thinkers, activists,
and community leaders joining us," said EFF Executive
Director Shari Steele. "We look forward to working with
them and benefiting from their wisdom."

Added EFF Executive Board Chairman Brad Templeton, "This
is an exciting time in EFF's history. We're bigger
than we've ever been, and we're able to take on many
new cases and issues. I welcome the Advisory Board's
help in shaping what EFF will become as we move forward."

The Advisory Board brings together a broad range of
backgrounds and points of view:

Edward Felten is a professor of computer science at
Princeton University and author of the highly
respected tech policy blog, "Freedom to Tinker"
(www.freedomtotinker.com).

Michael Froomkin is a professor of law at Miami Law
School and an expert in Internet law and
constitutional law.

Paul Grewal is a partner at Day Casebeer and an
expert in high tech law. He is admitted to practice
before various federal courts, as well as before the
US Patent and Trademark Office.

Jim Griffin is the CEO of Cherry Lane Digital, a company
dedicated to the future of music and entertainment
delivery. Griffin also founded the Pho list, where
thousands of members meet to discuss digital media.

David Hayes is a partner in the Intellectual Property
Group at Fenwick and West LLP and is an expert on
copyright law and digital media. He has served as
counsel for a number of precedent-setting software
copyright infringement cases, including Apple v.
Microsoft and the Napster case.

Mitch Kapor is one of EFF's founders, as well as the
founder of the Lotus Development Corporation. He is
also founder and chair of the Open Source
Applications Foundation (OSAF).

Mark Lemley is a professor at Stanford Law School
and is director of the Stanford Center for Law,
Science and Technology. He is the author of
several books and has testified before Congress
and the FTC on patent, antitrust, and
constitutional law matters.

Eben Moglen is Professor of Law at Columbia University, and pro bono
General Counsel of the Free Software Foundation. He was a law clerk
to Justice Thurgood Marshall of the US Supreme Court, holds a PhD in
legal history, and is the author of many articles and essays about the
free software and free culture movements.

Deirdre Mulligan is an Acting Clinical Professor of
Law at the Samuelson Law, Technology, and Public
Policy Clinic at UC Berkeley. She focuses on the
interplay between politics and the Internet and was
previously on staff at the Center for Democracy and
Technology.

Michael Page is a Partner at Keker & Van Nest LLP,
where he focuses on intellectual property litigation.
He has represented numerous high-profile clients
and recently won a California Attorney of the Year
award.

Michael Traynor is a partner at Cooley Godward LLP,
where he specializes in intellectual property,
business, and First Amendment litigation. He is
president of the American Law Institute and has
argued before the US Supreme Court.

Jim Tyre is an attorney and EFF fellow who has
represented free speech interests for more than
20 years. He is a founder of The Censorware
Project, which provides the public with
information about censorware products.

Nominate a Pioneer for EFF's 2005 Pioneer Awards

EFF established the Pioneer Awards to recognize leaders on
the electronic frontier who are extending freedom and
innovation in the realm of information technology. This is
your opportunity to nominate a deserving individual or
group to receive a Pioneer Award for 2005.

The Pioneer Awards nominations are open to individuals and
organizations from any country.

All nominations are reviewed by a panel of judges chosen
for their knowledge of the technical, legal, and social
issues associated with information technology.

This year's award ceremony will be held in Seattle in
conjunction with the Computers, Freedom and Privacy
conference (CFP), which takes place in mid-April.

How to Nominate Someone for a 2005 Pioneer Award:

You may send as many nominations as you wish, but please
use one email per nomination. Please submit your
entries via email to pioneer@eff.org.

We will accept nominations until February 1, 2005.

Simply tell us:

the name of the nominee,

the phone number or email address at which the
nominee can be reached, and, most importantly,

Apologists justified the broad, civil-liberties corroding
powers granted to the government under the USA PATRIOT Act
by arguing that they would be used to put terrorists behind
bars. Yet several provisions can be used against Americans
in a wide range of investigations that have nothing to do
with terrorism. Others are too vague, jeopardizing
legitimate activities protected under the First Amendment.
Worse, the Department of Justice has worked to expand and/or
extend a number of these provisions - despite the fact that
they were sold to the public as "temporary" measures and
are scheduled to expire, or "sunset," in December of 2005.

In our "Let the Sun Set on PATRIOT" series, we profile
these provisions with the goal of explaining how they harm
your rights and should therfore be allowed to expire.
But Section 223 is an exception to the rule. It bucks the
trend of PATRIOT provisions by actually *adding* new
checks and balances on government surveillance
rather than removing them.

For this reason, EFF supports its renewal.

How Section 223 Changed the Law

There are multiple statutes under which the government
can conduct communications surveillance, including the
Wiretap Act, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act
(ECPA), and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
(FISA) - all of which were expanded by PATRIOT. But
PATRIOT Section 223 added significant new checks on the
government’s surveillance powers under those statutes.

Specifically, it:

made clear that the same civil penalties that
apply to unauthorized spying under the Wiretap
Act and ECPA also apply to the unauthorized
disclosure of communications that were legally
obtained;

confirmed the authority of agency heads to
discipline federal officers who willfully or
intentionally violate the Wiretap Act or ECPA;
and

created a new civil cause of action against the
United States - now, victims of unlawful
surveillance have a clear way to sue the
government if it violates the Wiretap Act,
ECPA, or FISA.

Why Section 223 Should NOT Sunset

The government's broad authority to conduct electronic
surveillance requires equally powerful checks and balances
to increase accountability and prevent abuse, especially
since PATRIOT in many cases reduced court oversight and
lowered the legal standards necessary for engaging in
such surveillance. The new protections added by Section
223 certainly don't balance out the damage done to
privacy by the rest of PATRIOT, but they are nevertheless
valuable tools and should certainly be renewed.

US Webcasting Proposal Canned
A plan that would have allocated a slew of new rights to
webcasters while stripping a number from the public was
shelved due to lack of support from other countries:http://www.eff.org/cgi/tiny?urlID=331
(The Age)

Laser Printers Leave (Another) Paper Trail
Some color laser prints now have tiny, hidden dots to
identify their printer of origin. These codes aren't
visible to the naked eye, but the government uses them
to track evil-doers:http://www.eff.org/cgi/tiny?urlID=332
(Yahoo)

Rabid SciFi Fans Asked to Not Download "Galactica"
The new "Battlestar Galactica" is being launched in
the UK months before it hits North American airwaves,
and many fans are downloading that which is not yet
available to them (but necessary - oh, so necessary).
The producers don't like it, believing it will hurt
ratings:http://www.syfyportal.com/article.php?id=1591

If IP Policy Is Broken, Don't Adopt It
So advises law prof James Boyle in an excellent column
about how intellectual property policy should be
judged by whether or not it actually does its job -
that is, provides an incentive for creation.
A must-read:http://www.eff.org/cgi/tiny?urlID=334
(Financial Times)

Head of TechNet on the Hot Seat
Rick White leads the association of tech-sector executives,
and he recently took questions about the next four years
in tech policy:http://www.eff.org/cgi/tiny?urlID=335
(Washington Post)

Did Ashcroft Let Freedom Soar? Er, Not So Much
And he couldn't get security off the ground either. This
article looks at how Ashcroft paid for a few safety
improvements with a lot of our civil liberties:http://www.eff.org/cgi/tiny?urlID=336
(Salon; registration or silly ad-view required.)

Material from Internet Archive Deemed Admissible in Court
The Internet Archive is a big, free, semi-permanent record
of what's been published on the Internet, and now it's being
used as evidence - to both incriminate and exonerate - in
court:http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/packets/vol_2_no_3/002728.shtml

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